it is quite an interesting read,I have quoted some of the stand outs(IMO) below,if you wish to give the 6 page interview a miss

Retiring?

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“I’m retiring,” Lucas said. “I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.”

He was careful to leave himself an out clause for a fifth “Indiana Jones” film. But otherwise, “Red Tails” will be the last blockbuster Lucas makes. “Once this is finished, he’s done everything he’s ever wanted to do,” says Rick McCallum, who has been producing Lucas’s films for more than 20 years. “He will have completed his task as a man and a filmmaker.”

Red Tails

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Lucas first heard the story of the Tuskegee Airmen from a friend, the photographer George Hall, in 1988. It appealed on a visceral level — “I’m a fan of fast things” — and also because, despite criticism that “Star Wars” was too white, Lucas has always had an interest in civil rights. Back in the 1970s, Lucas almost cast an African-American as Han Solo (Glynn Turman, who played the first Baltimore mayor in “The Wire”).

“I can’t make that movie,” Lucas recalled thinking when he read the scripts. “I’m going to have make this kind of . . . entertainment movie.” So Lucas focused on the middle chapter: the dogfights and the Nazi-hunting black pilots who shout, “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (When I mention Lucas’s naïve style to Michael Bay, the director of the “Transformers” movies, he says sympathetically, “That’s what I get crap for from my critics.”)

Star Wars

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“Why would I make any more,” Lucas says of the “Star Wars” movies, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”

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In the last decade and a half, Lucas has given “Star Wars” several “final” cuts. For the 1997 special edition, he made Greedo, a green-skinned alien, fire his blaster at Han Solo because Han’s murdering Greedo in cold blood — as the 1977 version had it — struck him as a violation of his own naïve style. For the new Blu-ray version of “Return of the Jedi,” Lucas added Darth Vader shouting, “Nooo!” as he seizes the evil emperor in the movie’s climactic scene. Lucas made the Ewoks blink. And so forth.

When fanboys wailed, Lucas did not just hear the scream of young Jedis; he heard something like the voice of the studio. The dumb, uncomprehending voice in his Socratic dialogues — a voice telling him how to make a blockbuster

Indy 4

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In 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” the fourth and least-liked of the Lucas/Spielberg collaborations, Indy steps into a lead-lined refrigerator to survive a nuclear bomb. Like “jumping the shark,” “nuke the fridge” became shorthand for a creative nosedive and inspired a “South Park” episode in which Lucas and Spielberg rape their archaeologist hero. “Blame me,” Spielberg told Empire magazine last fall. “Don’t blame George. That was my silly idea.”

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-“What more could one ask for than to have one’s youth back again?” Lucas once asked his biographer, Dale Pollock. Now imagine it being yanked away. If the fanboys had become like the studio to Lucas, then Lucas, to the fanboys, had become the man who breaks the bad news about adulthood. He’d become their dad.

When I told Lucas that Spielberg had accepted the blame for nuking the fridge, he looked stunned. “It’s not true,” he said. “He’s trying to protect me.”

In fact, it was Spielberg who “didn’t believe” the scene. In response to Spielberg’s fears, Lucas put together a whole nuking-the-fridge dossier. It was about six inches thick, he indicated with his hands. Lucas said that if the refrigerator were lead-lined, and if Indy didn’t break his neck when the fridge crashed to earth, and if he were able to get the door open, he could, in fact, survive. “The odds of surviving that refrigerator — from a lot of scientists — are about 50-50,” Lucas said.

But I would guess there will be no one else that does anything with the Star Wars movies until he is gone. He may help his kids, but I'm not even sure if they are involved with movie making. Is he still going to do the TV show? Other than the Clone Wars I mean. I thought he shut that down for now. They should do another cartoon like the Clone Wars that's more for adults and no Jedi instead of the live action.

There's a very interesting article at the New York Times today about George Lucas. Read it and then come back. His newly-produced film, RED TAILS, about the Tuskeegee Airmen, opens this Friday across the country, and it's a project that's been close to his heart for many years now. I haven't seen RED TAILS yet, and I haven't heard much about it one way or the other with other critics, but I think it's a terrific story in its own right and worth a big screen adaptation, especially with today's modern technology. I don't see anything wrong with injecting a subject like that with a little popcorn entertainment; some people would never see it otherwise, and it's an important part of our history. Plus, the dogfights really do look killer.

But what's more interesting is that Lucas has announced that he's done with filmmaking - at least blockbuster filmmaking - from this point on. Now, this isn't new; we heard this from him as far back as 1983 after RETURN OF THE JEDI. But I'm thinking he's serious this time, at least in his mind; word has it he was genuinely hurt with fan reaction from the prequels, - “Why would I make any more, when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?” - and apparently he had a difficult time shopping RED TAILS around to the studios and was only able to get it made by footing much of the bill himself. So he's probably a little bit jaded about the entire process at this point. There's still various pans on the fire, of course - the STAR WARS TV show; a possible fifth entry into the Indiana Jones franchise - but for the most part, from the mouth of the man himself, “I’m retiring. I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.”

RED TAILS will be his last hurrah in big-budget filmmaking, at least filmmaking on that kind of scale. After this, the kinds of films he wants to make will be supposedly experimental works, along the lines of THX-1138. But I have a feeling that's not exactly true. I think George Lucas will be back in some form. I don't think he can stay away from trying to make something massively entertaining again, along the lines of STAR WARS and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. After all, even Akira Kurosawa balanced his serious films with entertainments, at least in that middle stretch of his career that we all know and love. Frankly, I think we'll have George Lucas to kick around for a while longer.

Quote from: Kagath on January 18, 2012, 08:05:19 AM

Is he still going to do the TV show? Other than the Clone Wars I mean. I thought he shut that down for now.

If you can believe it, in the mid 1990s, there was much hand-wringing George wouldn't be heavily involved with the second set of SW films. Much hand-wringing that unless he was heavily involved (I don't think anyone imagined he'd write/direct all three of those films, not in a million years), the second set of films wouldn't be any good. Can you believe it? Hindsight can be screwy.

I fully don't expect that he'll stop meddling with his older films, or that he'd make the original versions of the 1977-1983 SW films available on disc again, nor that he'll give, say, permission to Joe Johnston to do a Bobba Fett film. He'll also probably shoot down any further ideas for an Indiana Jones sequel until Harrison Ford's about 85. And he'll continue to be crabby and grouchy about fandom being "out of touch" and having "misplaced priorities," and that Ewoks and Jar-Jar are the most awesome creations of his career.

I've never really seen anyone whose entire career is owed to fandom (I'm not even sure the word or notion existed until Star Wars) so often treat so much of his fanbase with disdain, derision and disgust. Maybe he earned that right. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

I've never really seen anyone whose entire career is owed to fandom (I'm not even sure the word or notion existed until Star Wars) so often treat so much of his fanbase with disdain, derision and disgust. Maybe he earned that right. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

Let's not go overboard here - Lucas existed pre-Star Wars and looked like a nice up and coming film maker if you view stuff like American Grafitti, which is still an important film in a number of ground breaking ways. That he ended up primarily doing summer fantasy and action blockbusters instead should not be viewed as the totality of his career.

I certainly wish he'd leave his old movies alone and that he'd done a better job with the Anakin trilogy, but the reality is that like a lot of directors he got lucky a few times and if that happened spectacularly to you you'd probably have an inflated sense of how right you are as well.

Besides, as with crappy game sequels, crappy later movie sequels can't change how awesome the originals were when you first experienced them. For those moments I'll always thank Lucas. Even as I ignore the later crap.

Logged

Roger: And you should know, I have no genitals.Syndey: That's alright. I have both.

Apart from the usual names like Spielberg and Lucas,the names Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall were the shit back in the 80s and 90s,they are producers on great films still...so i am pretty happy about this decision,and hopefully she can put Lucasfilm back on top

(on another note i had absolutely no idea Kennedy and Marshall were married)

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George Lucas intends to remain Lucasfilm's CEO and serve as co-chairman for at least a year, working alongside Kathleen Kennedy as she assumes her new role.

from George:

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"I've spent my life building Lucasfilm, and as I shift my focus into other directions I wanted to make sure it was in the hands of someone equipped to carry my vision into the future," Lucas said in a statement. "It was important that my successor not only be someone with great creative passion and proven leadership abilities, but also someone who loves movies."

From Spielberg:

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"Kathy has been a member of both of our families going into a fourth decade so it does not feel like she is going to another galaxy far, far away," Spielberg said in a statement. "She will get just as much support from me with Lucasfilm as George has given both of us all these years."